Fat City (a post-movement manifesto)

Author

Sheridan, Christian Nikirk

Date

2005

Advisor

Oliver, Douglas

Degree

Master of Architecture

Abstract

The suburbs are making us fat. Fat is driving the suburbs. In an age when most things are measured by their efficient movement, suburban design spirals inward to a terminating node where stored equipment augments an increasingly static lifestyle. This high degree of sedentariness has brought with it obesiotic trends that have increased the girth of homes and bodies sitting around Houston. We are living in an environment expressing the end of movement---an era where physical activity is being engineered out of our lifestyles.
Fat City examines fattening expansion, immobile movement, and where it may lead. Cross sectioning through the metropolis, it analyzes where the chronic problem lies: within the microenvironment of the single-family home. It is a journey from community to singularity. Understood historically and contemporaneously, it will be shown how anti-urban, pathogenic, causal views created the desire for the single-family detached home.
The results of the retreat from community have personal effects encompassing public consequence. Through the historical unraveling of urban growth and the contemporary contextualization of that expansion, the end of movement is revealed. Within this field of abundance, embryonic patterns have begun to emerge and become tangible. This is the age of post-movement and Fat City is the debut of those solidified trends.